I have to vote against them. They appear to be much too wide for the space, and I think a dark finish there will close in the room.
What led you to abandon the earlier plan for building some in, if I may ask?

If I am understanding correctly....you would split them apart & put one on each side of the windows? Yes? Then the crown moulding is only going to wrap aroun on 2 sides & not the middle part which will be seen.

I agree, keep looking or build something in - a window seat would be great in that bay window.

Smiles:)

I was going to split them up, they're each only 19" wide and I have 24" to each side of bay. But now the seller says the crown is one piece, so I don't know how it would look to split them (though I was going to put the side with no crown against the wall, so swap the right and left as shown so "middle" was actually outside of each piece).

I decided against built-ins for now since we are going to wait until we replace the carpet with hardwoods. Seemed easier to do it all at once (and we'll probably do a window seat then too). Plus even if my cousin built them it was going to be hard to find room to stain and finish two 8ft tall x 2ft wide x 1ft deep bookcases in the winter/spring. Now that it's summer I've been working on other pieces (waiting for good stretch of dry weather to take window sashes out and finish them - last week was literally making hay while the sun shone, this week has been finishing window casings for all the downstairs windows and a new continuous sill/stool for the bay, getting slider casing and baseboard installed. Plus *still* trying to figure out/get someone to install railing/newel/balusters (or at leas t a railing!) on our stairs, if you remember that thread from 9 months ago!

I guess I'll keep looking for another matching Ikea shelf.

I vote to wait and do the built-ins and windowseat. They will be well worth the wait.

I would want to see what the unit looks like without the crown across the top and also what they look like on the side that meets the other unit. Many times these "unseen" areas are not finished the same as the sides that are always meant to be seen.

So, It might look odd anyways. I think with all your oak and casual furniture the style doesn't go. You need something a bit less formal. I would think a finished oak bookcase that matches your trim would look best.

What are you planning for between the two bookcases until the window seat is done? It's going to be a fairly open area that will need a chair, bench or something to fill it in.

We could use the shelf space now, though. We'll probably be waiting 10 years to replace the carpet - it's only 2 years old.

What about , for the moment, you got a larger square coffee table with drawers to store art supplies & a bench with drawers to store toys? You could search on CL for these things & paint or use polyshades to match your existing woodwork.
Big baskets are great, too to stick under any side tables & the kids can pull them out & put them away themselves.

I really like the way it looks in the pic without any bookshelves (for what it's worth - nothing!!) and think it would be a great place to stack some pics of your kid(s) in matching frames in b&w or sepia toned photos - maybe 3 on each side of the bay windows.

Smiles:)

Here are some pics I just took - Ikea bookcase (in process of finishing continuous stool and trim for bay so it's more ripped up than normal)

Slider - we got the trim up around this earlier this week. It looks skimpy - but too late. I *did* buy wider trim for the front door (with sidelights) but have left the builder's trim in this room.

{{!gwi}}

Oh, I didn't get the whole slider in, but did you notice the "cheap cleat" on the side to wind the cords around? I have to put them on the windows too (when I put the romans in the bay, hopefully next week - I've had them 11 months!).

Oh, forgive the brocade fabric on the LS - I forgot it was there (thinking of recovering a couple pillows), and the blue tape at the bottom of the door trim - had to glue it b/c it split when we nailed it up. Funny how you don't notice these things IRL!

"had to glue it b/c it split when we nailed it up."

Just a tip about trim which you may have already learned by this error, if you pre-drill those holes with a bit that's smaller than your nails, your wood trim won't split when nailed into the sheetrock.

Scooby - we were posting at the same time. The coffee table has 2 drawers (I should clean them out and see what we can fit in them) and one door where we keep all our phone books. There is a shelf under each end table - I can look to see how big a basket we can fit and what will fit neatly. Unfortunately I am still looking for a place to store LPs - all the flowered boxes in the bookcase are tapes (and we don't have a tape player any more!) and CDs.

nan - my cousin who is a carpenter has been using a compressor and brad to put up window and door trim after he joins it to keep mitres tight. All the prehung doors I've finished the trim in place and just set the builder's nails (didn't do any good to tack it loosely since we found the flimsy metal "fins" in the mitres don't hold when you pull it off). My cousin is also recutting baseboard to scarf over joints since the builder didn't pay attention to that (some base was even cut too short and tacked in place, I've had to buy new). I don't know if I want to tell him how to do his job since he's doing me a favor and charging me so little to do this work. This is the only spot (just b/c it was so close to the end) that split in the whole house. Thanks for the tip anyway.

"...all the flowered boxes in the bookcase are tapes (and we don't have a tape player any more!)"

Put the tapes in a plain, cardboard box. Take the box to the nearest Goodwill. Voila! Your storage issues are partially solved.

But seriously, even if you are not ready to purge, do the tapes *HAVE* to be stored in the living room? Is there a more out-of-the-way place to store things that you rarely (or never) use?

The tapes don't have to be stored in the FR, but this *is* the purge from when we moved 2 yrs ago (gave stereo to Salvation Army). When we bought the 4-in-1 player that looks like an old time radio last year I missed the fact that it didn't have tape player - only CD, turntable, MP3 and radio. Guess we'll have to sell it and buy the 5-in-1 LOL. Still have a box of LPs too. They would stick out over the front of the shelf in current bookcase.

Actually, I've been thinking of putting great-grandpa's Victrola in the empty corner (get it out of more transitional LR with dark wood). There's a little storage in that, not sure if deep enough for LPs, and it's not good to store them flat but I may try.

We've got to get more bookcases for the study (DS ended up with them in his room when we moved), then we can bring our books down from the attic and maybe we'll have room for tapes up there, until we get a stereo with a cassette deck in the FR. Or DH transfers them all to MP3. I won't give up my LPs or CD box sets, though.